Love Stinks
by Sinister Scribe
Summary: Inspired by Pepe le Pew of all things. House acts decidedly not himself. Cuddy says 'le eep' a lot. Rated for my usual stuff not intended to be serious at all.


_**Okies, heya kiddies!**_

_**Know it's been ages since I updated or wrote anything but everything in life has been a bit up in the air at the moment or recently or whatever and I've kind of lost interest in House and Housedom in general. **_

_**I'm sure I'll perk up sooner or later but I just wanted to write something fluffy, smutty and funny, so here we are. This is the result of too much white chocolate and Pepe Le Pew cartoons. **_

_**This will mebbe have two or three parts to it and is meant as a glorified vignette along the lines of the Seven Days of Smut series. I might have made it Valentine day themed if I liked that holiday but I don't. **_

_**All you grossly in love couples out there can just bugger off with cucumbers for all I care.**_

_**Luv and hugs fae me means leave reviews from yourselves. **_

_**Ciaooooooooo.**_

_**BTW, recommendation of the week is 'Destination Unknown' by Gidget89. Tis excellente. **_

**The Scent d'Amour**

House moped his way into clinic and tried to look exactly as dispassionate about the whole process as he felt. He perused the pile of in files on Brenda the Barbarian's work station, flipping a few off their neat perch to sprawl over the desk before picking one apparently at random. This behaviour garnered him a venomous glare from the Head Honcho of the Little Clinic of Horrors herself. He made a face at her and went on his slightly less than merry way. He hunched it under his arm and then lurched off to exam room three. He'd treat this aberrant sniffle, kick the annoyance of humanity out of the small room and then spend the rest of his allotted hours gazing unseeing into his portable television at _General Hospital_ reruns.

Sounded good to him.

House grasped the handle and then swung it inward only to stop short at the pervading scent of…cinnamon?

Laser blue eyes landed on a small man bent over what appeared to be a case full of chemical vials. His scrawny frame was scrunched over the various bottles and fluids encased in the sleek stainless steel carrier with its black velvet interior. House could admit to himself that his curiosity lifted its head and scented the air at such an odd thing to have in a clinic of all places but apathy promptly sat on the sensation and smothered him back to a suitably irritable mood.

"Alright, Igor, what kind of malady do you bring from the secret lab today?"

The small man whirled with a squeak and House sat back suddenly on the perch he'd taken on his stool. Huge coke bottle bottom glasses rested on a prominent rat like nose on the man's face. House wrinkled his own nose out of some kind of empathy for the huge appendage.

"I brought my lab with me, Doctor. My work is never done." Mr Rat removed his huge glasses and folded them away over the neck of his button down shirt. Now that they were gone he took on more human proportions but his nose was still definitely…noticeable.

"Wow, if that's the nose I'd hate to see that grindstone." House muttered and flipped open the file to see what the horrific pain that afflicted this poor guy couldn't wait until he got to a pharmacy to buy cough drops.

"Oh, like I've never heard that one before." Mr Rat snorted (an impressive move when undertaken by a man such as himself) and hopped onto the exam bench to sit primly, his small hands folded on his lap and his case remaining open beside him. "I'm sneezing all the time."

House looked up and stared at Mr Rat for a moment or six.

"Not right now you aren't."

Mr Rat allowed a smirk at that. "No, it just seems to be when I'm at work. It's very disruptive."

"Where do you work?" Ah crap, House planted his chin on the crook of his cane, looked like he was actually going to have to do some work on this one.

"I work for a small perfume company. Recently my nose has become much more sensitive to the musks we use for our blends, it's making my job more difficult to do." Rat shrugged and House wheeled himself across the floor flipping a penlight open and shining it up that amazing schnozz on the guy's face. Rat tilted his head back, helpless to do anything but listen as House spoke.

"Perfumes huh? So you kill a bunch of animals for their adrenal glands, strain it, melt it and bottle it in some obscure shape and then sell it at an inflation of about 900 per cent? Nice work if you can get it." House sighed. "They all smell the same anyway."

Rat jerked his head away and glared at House. "I could say the same for all auto-immune deficiencies. They all screw with your white blood cells, they're all life threatening and they're all without cure."

House glared at the man.

"You can tell a lot about someone by how they smell. I would have thought a doctor would have known that. Don't certain types of diseases give off a certain smell?"

House's glare intensified. He wasn't in the mood for this.

"Tell a lot about someone by how much they stink?" House arched a brow in an age old 'prove it' gesture.

Rat sighed and leant forward off the bench into House's personal space. He inhaled deeply and then sat back, head tilted back and his eyes closed. He seemed to taste the air for a moment and then spoke in a low considered voice.

"You live alone, no pets, a maid cleans your apartment for you. You're a musician, prominently piano and guitar, though there's vinyl there so I suspect a sizeable record collection. You eat junk food, Chinese is your favourite, drink copious amounts of scotch and your system is saturated with some kind of narcotic. Your relationship with your parents is estranged and the only female company you've had in recent months has been of the variety that is bought and paid for." Rat opened his eyes and smirked at House.

House tried hard not to looked shocked. It was rare when it happened and even rarer for anyone to know it had happened but this guy had thrown him a loop. His first thought was that Wilson was setting him up…but he hadn't _done_ anything especially horrific to Wilson recently. His second suspect was Cuddy but this was not the kind of stunt she'd pull unless she wanted him to take the case and all this guy had was a simple infection of the nasal cavity. House's mouth twisted and he scraped his fingernails over his jaw.

"I'm going to prescribe you a course of antibiotics." He finally said and scrawled hurriedly across his prescription pad. Rat had knocked him off balance and he wanted rid of the little rodent as soon as possible.

"Don't be offended, doctor. I'm just very good at my job."

"So am I. Your nose is infected due to chemical burns of the nasal passageways, I suggest you stay away from those musks at work for a while." House gritted out. He just wanted to sit back and ignore everyone, not get into twenty questions with the Great Nose of the East Coast over there.

"Well thank you, doctor." Rat smiled sunnily and took the prescription from House's uncaring fingers. "You're lonely aren't you?"

"WHAT?" House turned and looked up at Rat to see a completely earnest expression on the younger man's face.

"I think it might be as much to do with your caustic attitude as it is to do with your drug addiction." Rat continued blithely.

"What?!" House froze, midway through popping his brunch vicodin.

"Maybe I can help. After all, one good turn deserves another." Rat was now rummaging industriously through his case of clinking bottles.

"What?!" House could do nothing but stare. What was this idiot babbling on about?

"Here we are! This'll fix you up in no time." Rat smirked and pulled a large glass bottle of pink liquid from his case and aimed the spritzer at House before ruthlessly skooshing him with it.

"Urgh!" House was up and out of the stool, staggering backwards as a strong, though not unpleasant smell engulfed his senses. He now liberally stank of this…this…_stuff_!

He finally turned his seething attention on Rat only to find the little bastard had made good his escape. He snarled low in his throat and caught another kick of that cloying perfume with every inhalation. He stormed out of the exam room, his vision doing something funny, intent on finding the little rodent and making himself a new hat with his ribcage. His snarl melted away when he spotted Cuddy signing forms across the room. The light caught her hair just so…he liked her hair all tumbled and wild like that. Made him want to muss it up because mussing meant sweet aches in tender places and House very much wanted to be the cause of Cuddy's sweet aches in that moment.

He suddenly felt very mellow, his horny metre at a low boil, and his lush target square in his sights. A slow smile crept over his mouth in tiny hooked corners. His Machiavellian mind began to tumble plots on how to tumble the boss and his cane thumped with a slight squeak against the waxed floors of the clinic as he moved ahead full.

**$inister $cribe**

"Have lunch with me."

Cuddy stopped mid-signature and frowned. She looked up at Brenda and her frown intensified even as every single nerve in her body _zinged_ at his presence directly behind her.

"Did you hear me?" This time his breath hushed against her ear causing her to jump and whirl to face him. All of a sudden they were chest to chest and Cuddy had nowhere to go, pinned as she was against the nurse's station.

"What?!" She demanded, trying to bluster her way out of it, but House apparently wasn't in the mood. He loomed closer still.

"You, me, tiny Italian place I know around the corner. It'll be nice."

"What?!" Cuddy tried to shuffle away and only succeeded in skirting him to be caught by her wrist and yanked back towards him like a fish caught helplessly on a hook.

"Or dinner, dinner might be better. Dinner could be at my place." He smiled at her - a disturbingly genuine smile – and inched her a little closer to his spicy scent. She noted the change internally but refused to acknowledge it out loud. They were only in front of a hundred witnesses here.

"House, what is wrong with you? I'm not having dinner with you. You have clinic to do."

"Oh, so the two are connected? I do my clinic and I get a reward?" His eyes…_simmered_ when he looked at her like that and Cuddy felt her chest heave and her cheeks flush against her will. He'd always been darkly seductive but he'd obviously never really turned it on around her before.

"Wha…no! Do your clinic or I'll pull all your authorisation." She snapped at him. Embarrassed and more than a little frightened at exactly how tempting his offer was sounding right now.

"Don't be like that, Luscious. I'll do my clinic and then we'll have dinner and then…" His voice lowered several octaves as he whispered in her ear. Nobody else in the clinic heard what he said to the dean, not even Brenda who stood gaping not two feet away, all they saw was how Doctor Cuddy's aqua eyes widened and her cheeks were seared a deep flush of rose pink, her lips parted on a silent gasp and her hand actually came up to cover her mouth.

House pulled away, apparently satisfied. "Deal?" He didn't wait for an answer and instead raised her hand to his mouth, laying a butterfly wing soft kiss on her knuckle before whirling and snatching up another file and hobbling down the hallway to disappear into exam room 4.

Cuddy, along with everyone else, stared after him for long moments after the door had closed. Cuddy swallowed hard and could feel the movement under the hand at her throat.

"Uh…you want me to get something for dealing with him?" Brenda finally offered, regaining her feet first. "His team? Security?" She was silent a beat further. "Pack of Trojans?"

That snapped Cuddy out of her reverie and she glared at her head nurse. She spun on her heel and headed back to her office with a smart tempo to her clicking heels.

This was going to be a _loooong _day.


End file.
